"Robert Redelmeier" <redelm@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:0XHVj.246$l97.231@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Frank Kotler <fbkotler@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in part:
> > Came across this article about recovering data from a hard drive
> > salvaged from the debris of the Columbia space shuttle...
> >
> >
<http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/S/SHUTTLE_RECOVERED_DATA?SITE=WIRE&SE
CTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT>
> >
> > ----------------------
> > However, at the core of the drive, the spinning metal platters that
> > actually store data were not warped. They had been gouged and pitted,
> > but the 340-megabyte drive was only half full, and the damage happened
> > where data had not yet been written.
> >
> > Edwards attributes that to a lucky twist: The computer was running an
> > ancient operating system, DOS, which does not scatter data all over
> > drives as other approaches do.
> > ----------------------------------
> >
> > There ya go! Yet another reason to stick with the tried and true
methods!
>
> This surprises me.
I took "at the core of the drive" to be fanciful wording for "inside the
drive" not as "near the spindle". Did you?
> IIRC, MS-DOS wrote disks from the outside
> inwards.
That's the way I pictured it, I think... (with inwards being near the
spindle, and outwards being near the head park). I.e., I pictured half
the
disk as full as a "donut" with the "hole" as unwritten.
> I would expect the worst damage on disk peripheries.
Luck? Vacuum? Which layers were damaged - just the external layers of
the
top or bottom - or all? I'd assume the platters weren't spinning when
burned. I.e., the device the drive was in was powered down before
reentry.
But, perhaps they were and because the seal was broken, only air drag near
the center of the spindle swirled dust. Or, perhaps, it was turbulence of
wind with dirt around the spindle damaging just the center. Who knows?
Rod Pemberton
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